Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Interview with the Creator of Ruby

Posted by michael on from the precious-gems dept.

Lisa writes: "Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto talks about Ruby's history, the influence of Perl and Python on Ruby, and his new book, Ruby in a Nutshell. In the article he explains: "When I started the language project, I was joking with a friend that the project must be code-named after a gemstone's name (àla Perl). So my friend came up with "ruby". It's a short name for a beautiful and highly valued stone. So I picked up that name, and it eventually became the official name of the language. Later, I found out that pearl is the birthstone for June, and ruby is the birthstone for July. I believe Ruby is an appropriate name for the next language after Perl.""

3 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. I'm going to come out with a scripting language by badfish2 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I'm going to call it ASS, which will stand for Active Scripting Somethingrather. People will use it because theirs won't stink, but everyone else's will. Of course, they will know that everyone else's stinks because of the power of Open Source - everyone will want to packet-sniff everyone else's ASS to see how theirs is configured, which one is pretty, and which one stinks.

    I long for the day when I will have an o'reilly interview where I get to sit and talk about ASS.

    --
    "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!" - a dog
    1. Re:I'm going to come out with a scripting language by scrytch · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Yeah, but no one will want to maintain code written in it, because it looks like ASS :)

      --
      I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
  2. sorry, but the problem is you by mj6798 · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    There was no "flaming" in the message you were responding to. It is people like you that think any message that criticises something dear to their heart is a "flame" or a "troll" that make Slashdot such an unpleasant place sometimes.

    If you disagree with an opinion in a reasonably politely worded message, respond with a good technical argument. Don't throw out random accusations or moderate down messages you merely disagree with.

    Also, don't point people at a few hundred pages of documentation--it's counterproductive. If proponents of a tool are incapable of producing a concise statement of why their tool is better than other tools, people are entitled to assume that it isn't worth looking into it further. The burden of proof is on the shoulders of people who want mindshare, not on the shoulders of people who want to use existing tools.

    (As for Ruby, it seems like a reasonable language with a nicer C interface than Python. Enough to switch? I don't know.)